Unwritten Rules
by Harmonizing Dichotomy
Summary: When Danny and Co. find Ghost Writer injured in the Ghost Zone, they end up taking the battered poet back with them. Meanwhile, Danny's got a very difficult paper due for Mr. Lancer...is his new secret houseguest going to help or hinder?
1. Much Too Unique A Specimen

**This is my first attempt at a fanfic, and it's also fairly old...about a year actually. . It's rather Ghost Writer-centric, seeing as he was my favorite character on Danny Phantom for a while...still is, along with Technus and Vlad. Anyway, I'll let you get on with your reading...obviously, I don't own any of the characters in this story, all are property of Nickelodeon and Butch Hartman.**

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Ghost Writer absent-mindedly avoided a passing ghost as he made his way back to his house. The fellow he'd almost hit threw a dirty look at him down his nose, but the master author didn't notice, engrossed as he was with his current task.

He was attempting to scribble down ideas for a new novel in one of his ever-present notebooks, but he was having a hard time getting a storyline right. Clichéd beginning here, weak characters there…all in all, his pencil seemed to be doing more crossing out than actual writing.

His legs instinctively led him down an alley, a shortcut to his library-like home. As he approached the end, another ghost caught sight of him as he passed the alley's entrance, or exit from the Ghost Writer's view. A smirk began to tweak the ghost's metallic features.

"Out of jail so soon?" he questioned in his deep, booming voice. "Walker's not one to bend his own rules."

That got Ghost Writer's attention. He finally brought his bespectacled eyes off his notebook and fixed them on the face of Skulker. "Apparently even he is capable of some Christmas spirit," he answered somewhat warily.

"Hmm…" Skulker advanced a few steps into the alley. Ghost Writer fought the instinct to back up. "I doubt he was feeling quite _that_ generous…apparently, you're powerful even without the Quantum Keyboard." Though, his tone suggested he didn't think it likely. "Or just a trickster."

"Why should it concern you? You've broken out of Walker's jail too many times to count!" Ghost Writer attempted to walk around Skulker, but the flame-haired ghost stretched out a large arm to the opposite wall, blocking his way.

"You really thought I just stopped by to chat?" he leered. "You're much too unique a specimen to allow to escape! And without your keyboard you'd be an easy prey!"

Ghost Writer felt a twinge of fear. Without the Quantum Keyboard, most of his reality-bending powers were gone and he was left only with the 'standard' ghost powers-and his were, by ghost standards, rather weak.

A whirring of machinery made him look up at Skulker's arm-a net had sprung up out of it, and was obviously about to be shot at him. Ghost Writer ducked and leapt towards the street outside the alley, only to be caught across the chest by Skulker's other arm.

"Oof!" he fell backwards, the wind knocked out of him.

"Ha! You cannot escape the Ghost Zone's Greatest Hunter!" Skulker proclaimed.

"Over-confidence leads to carelessness, which leads to failure," Ghost Writer prophesized from his position on the ground.

Incensed, Skulker growled, "You suggest I wouldn't be able to catch you, you little starving artist? You're powerless without your keyboard!"

Ghost Writer gripped a nearby dumpster and pulled himself back up. "Maybe-but when I have it, even 'the Ghost Zone's Greatest Hunter' can't catch me to put on display." He gave an inward shudder of disgust at the last part. "And you know that-otherwise, if you'd wanted me you would have tried already."

Skulker's emerald eyes glowed with renewed anger, then squinted as his mouth contorted into a toothy smirk. "As your pelt's not much to look at anyway, I suppose it wouldn't matter if it was a little…damaged."

Ghost Writer's eyes widened in fear as Skulker produced a large, menacing gun…


	2. Never Let a Ghost Dog Near A PDA

Danny and Sam stared at their beret-capped friend with a mix of disbelief and worry.

"Remind me- _why_ are we friends with him?" Danny looked over at Sam and simply shrugged in response.

Tucker meanwhile (completely oblivious to their lack of enthusiasm), was literally jumping for joy. Thrusting his hands out in front of himself, he proudly displayed the source of his ecstasy. "It's a new model!" he gushed. Danny inwardly cringed at the unbidden mental image of Tucker as an obsessive fangirl. "It's the TechMate 3000-just came out today!"

"How'd you get it so soon, Tuck? You convince Sam to pre-order it for you?" Sam snorted and mumbled something along the lines of "As if I'd spend my money on _another_ PDA for him…"

"Nope! I did it the old-fashioned way! The way any real fan of anything gets their merchandise!" He pumped a fist in the air. "A real, time-honored tradition!"

"You camped outside the store all night with the other techno geeks, didn't you?" Sam smirked, knowing she was right.

"No!" Tucker protested. "I got in line at _noon_ yesterday!"

Sam gave up and smacked a hand to her forehead. Danny snickered, earning himself a glare. However, rather than silencing him, it simply caused him to laugh harder.

"Can we move on now?" Sam asked irritably, though Danny was sure he saw a grin start on his gothic friend's face. She slid her backpack off her shoulders and unzipped the main compartment, and Tucker reluctantly followed suit. Danny grabbed for his backpack and started leafing through a rather ridiculously large amount of paper and other, less easily-identifiable things, searching for his assignment.

"Dude, did you fight one of the ghosts in there or something?" Tucker peered into the depths of Danny's backpack disapprovingly. "You should try to organize stuff, like me." He showed Danny his (disturbingly) orderly backpack. Everything was in its own separate folder or compartment. Danny felt himself twitch. "That's…clean….too clean."

Tucker simply made a "hmph!" noise and, quickly locating his homework, took it out.

Danny eventually found his (it had shifted to the bottom) and looked it over. It was an individual project, assigned of course by Danny's favorite teacher- Mr. Lancer. The three of them had decided to look at it together anyway, mainly due to Danny's constant pestering about it-his grades were pretty bad due to late night town-saving missions, and if he failed this project he'd also fail English.

Danny read the assignment out loud. "'This assignment is purposefully left to your interpretation, to encourage _creative _writing.'" _Oh, boy…_ "'Write an essay of no less than three pages-'"

"Three pages!" Tucker whined. Danny felt his pain, but Sam just told him to keep reading.

"-'no less then three pages about'…." Danny trailed off in confusion.

Tucker, however, had been reading along on his paper and finished for him. "Write three pages about_ writing_?!" He looked up at his two friends for support. "We're supposed to _write_ something _about writing_?!"

"That's not all it says," interrupted Sam. She continued. "'Possible topics for discussion-why people write, why _you_ write, writing's effect on the world today'…" Sam considered the paper for a moment before saying "Well, at least it's easy, even it's long."

"Easy?!" Danny and Tucker were together on this one.

Sam rolled her purple eyes. "Yes, easy. Don't you see? He just wants a flowery paper about how much we love writing."

"But I don't love writing! I'm practically failing that class!" complained Danny.

Tucker, however, was concerned about a more puzzling issue. "How are _you_ going to write a 'flowery' essay about anything, Sam?"

Sam smirked. "Oh, I'll use big words and all the stuff Mr. Lancer expects…but I'll be writing about Goth poetry, of course! Maybe I'll even suggest the Skulk and Lurk as a good place to get some."

Danny and Tucker groaned good-naturedly, and Sam not-so-good-naturedly scowled in response.

Just then, Danny's breath turned blue- his ghost sense! "I'm going ghost!" In a flash, two rings appeared around his stomach, spreading out to his head and feet. In their wake was revealed Danny Phantom, who quickly jumped into the air, readying himself for a valiant fight for his…town….Danny stared at the intruder, returning to the ground. "Well, it's been a while since you came back." The ghost dog that has caused so much trouble between him and Valerie looked up at him innocently, wagging its green tail. Phantom returned to Fenton and Danny stooped down, petting the dog.

"You need some help fighting off this ghost, Danny?" Sam asked sarcastically.

"Ha ha, Sam…Oof!" Danny fell backwards onto the ground as the dog jumped on him.

"You sure, dude?" Tucker chuckled.

Sam turned back to her copy of Lancer's assignment. "Come on guys, let's get to work." Both boys groaned over-dramatically and Sam once again found cause to roll her purple eyes.

"Alright, I'll-aah! No!" Tucker pounced at the ghost dog and ended up introducing his face to the (rather hard) floor.

"Tuck, what are you-" Danny saw what Tucker was so upset about a moment later. The ghost dog had Tucker's TechMate 3000 in its jaws, proudly wagging its tail at its new prize. "Tucker, calm down, he probably just thinks it's a chew toy. I'm sure he'll give it back-" Danny stopped talking as the dog leapt back into the Ghost Zone through the portal. "Or not."

Tucker looked like his heart had been ripped out. Dropping to his knees, he yelled, "Why? Why my PDA?! Wwwhhhyyyy?!" Suddenly ceasing in his mournings, he jumped up and grabbed Danny by the front of the shirt. "We HAVE to get that PDA!"

Danny stared wide-eyed at his friend. "Uh, Tuck?...Can't you just buy a new one?"

"Are you crazy?! I can't just buy another! Do you have any idea what those _cost_?!" Tucker's eye twitched.

"Well…we could use the Specter Speeder to find it, since it can detect Real World items…"

"Thank you! Thankyouthankyou_thankyou_!" Tucker hugged Danny and ran into the Specter Speeder before Danny could react. Sam's voice sounded from behind him, "Are you serious, Danny? How do you know we won't run into one of our _other_ ghost 'friends'?"

"Oh, come on Sam," said Danny. "We'll be in and right back out again. We're just going after one little ghost dog-what could possibly happen?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Here's chapter three! I hope everyone enjoys reading it...I definitely had fun writing this one. Much thanks to DarkAngelKisses, Esme Kali Phantom, Hordak's Pupil, peppymint, and Shadowfox123 for reviewing the last chapters! I tried making this a bit longer than my other chapters, as I've had a few people point out that they were rather short. **

_Boom. _Ghost Writer started and winced, turning around to see that his hiding spot (a large dumpster) had just exploded.

"You can run, but you can't hide, Writer!" Ghost Writer cringed at the cliché and then rushed to duck a metallic, over-sized fist.

"I'd beg to differ," was his muttered reply, before turning intangible and fleeing into the next alleyway over. Turning quickly, he sprinted towards the exit and onto the main street.

In the human world, a man rushing out of an alley and stopping to look around nervously, only to be tackled back out of sight by a blur of silver and green that burst from the ground would have been quite the spectacle. Here in the Ghost Zone it hardly earned a handful of turned heads, and even those soon went back to what they'd previously been doing.

"Oof!" The poet stared up at Skulker, who was currently pinning him onto the ground, his steel-clad knee pressing painfully against his stomach. "You were saying, prey?" Skulker leaned back, a huge net springing from his massive right arm, ready to fire.

Ghost Writer simply sighed and rolled his eyes before phasing through the floor. Skulker stared blankly at the now-empty concrete below him, blinking a few times before his mind processed that his prey had just escaped again. The hunter let out a frustrated yell as he retracted the bulky weapon back into his arm.

Floating in the cellar he'd ended up in, Ghost Writer chuckled to himself. "He can't honestly have thought it'd be that easy." Landing on the faintly damp floor, he quickly surveyed the room for a hiding place. He spotted a stack of crates in the corner, and approaching he could see that they were filled with an unidentifiable _something_ that gave off an unhealthy glow. However, they seemed to be the only real cover in the room, and so, cursing Skulker, he slid his thin frame behind it.

Ghost Writer was well-aware his only real chance was simply losing Skulker; he was a bit cocky, perhaps, but certainly not stupid. He knew without the Keyboard it was really no match, and so he stayed as still as he could behind his luminous hiding place.

He proved to be just in time, too, for Skulker's flame-haired head burst through the ceiling moments later. Dropping fully into the dim room, he began looking around with his eerily pupil-less eyes. "I appreciate a challenge, prey," he rumbled with a toothy grin. Despite himself, Ghost Writer found a slight shiver going up his spine at the words. He hoped it was just the chill in the basement. After all, if he'd escaped Walker's prison, he could surely escape Skulker, even if he was the self-proclaimed best hunter in the Ghost Zone.

**----------------------**

"Tucker, will you_ stop that_?!" The Goth hollered. Sufficiently mollified, Tucker ceased in his fiddlings with the control panel, instead contenting himself to stare intently at the Real World Item detector.

"Relax, Tuck" Danny's voice was much calmer than Sam's had been, "I'm sure we'll find it. Cujo can't have gone that far." Steering around a large floating tropical island, his pale blue eyes caught sight of a luminous green tail. Simultaneously, the RWI detector let out a beep. "There!" Pressing a bit harder on the gas, he sped after the mischievous ghost dog. Purple doors and random objects flew by the Specter Speeder, and Danny found himself wondering how the ghosts managed to find their ways around. The place was a veritable maze; except even mazes seemed to have a pattern to them…everything appeared to have been placed helter-skelter, with no real forethought as to how one would manage finding their ways around once all was said and done.

"Danny!" Sam's voice yanked Danny violently out of his musings and he just barely managed to jerk the steering wheel to the side in time, narrowly missing a mausoleum-looking building as it drifted lazily by.

"Sorry," he said, realizing he'd also lost sight of Cujo again. Looking down at the RWI detector, he saw that the dog (or the PDA, at any rate) was somewhere to the left. "Alright, let's see if we can catch up…"

"Ugh, I hope so. We still need to work on that essay, remember?" The answering groans no doubt signified that they'd hoped Sam had forgotten. "Just remember, it _was_ your idea, Danny. You need the help."

"I know, I know," the halfa assured her, followed by a muttered, "doesn't mean I like the idea of it though."

Sam gave a small smile of amusement, before motioning out the "ecto-bullet-proof" window. "Think he went there?" Danny and Tucker both turned to look where she was pointing to see a sprawling, city-like chunk of land. Glancing back at the controls, Danny saw that the dot signifying a real world item was, indeed, in that direction. "Looks like it." Guiding the Speeder towards the floating metropolis, he made sure to keep an eye open for the elusive dog. "Anyone see him?" A chorus of no's as his answer, he was starting to wonder if going over to the landmass fully-visible was a good idea. He didn't doubt his abilities (there probably weren't any particularly powerful ghosts there anyway) but they were sure to be outnumbered.

"There he is!" Tucker's outburst caused Danny to almost fall off his chair. _"I have _got_ to stop drifting off like that." _"And he's still got my PDA!"

"Oh, thank _goodness_," Sam's sarcastic voice jumped in, then "…where?"

"Right there!" the beret-capped boy gestured (somewhat wildly) towards the far side of the area, and Danny and Sam both obediently squinted at it. A pale green blur shot down an alleyway-Cujo. Ignoring the nagging doubt from before, Danny sped after the dog. "No _way_ is he getting away this time!"

**------------------------**

Ghost Writer frowned in his cramped hiding place. He hadn't heard a sound from Skulker since he'd entered, but he was equally sure the large hunter hadn't left. _"What is he doing?"_ This was answered seconds later by the ghost's huge head suddenly bursting through the crates, his terrible grin gleaming in the light they gave off. "You breathe rather loudly for someone who's dead, you know," he said simply, before grasping a startled Ghost Writer's jacket and yanking him bodily from behind his cover. Holding him at eye-level, it was clear the 'Ghost Zone's Greatest Hunter' was preparing to toy with his prey. "Foolish Writer, you can't really have thought tha-"

"Sorry to cut you off, but I figure I'll just save both of us some_ time_." The last word came out as a grunt as Ghost Writer charged his hands with plasma and shot Skulker in the chest. Caught off guard as his til-then non-aggressive target fought back, Skulker let go and staggered back several steps. Ghost Writer immediately dove through the nearest wall, finding himself in a wine cellar of sorts. Speeding over to the other end, he entered into the next adjacent cellar, trying to put as much distance between himself and Skulker as possible. "It's a good thing he wasn't expecting an attack," the poet mused to himself. "I just hope that that doesn't make him hold more of a grudge…"

No such luck. As he stopped in one of the seemingly endless basements, slowly dropping back to the floor and leaning himself against the wall, he paused and listened intently. A slight rumble sounded beneath him. "What is that noi-" The wind was abruptly knocked out of him as the rough equivalent of a two-ton cannonball hit him, roaring something about Ghost Writer's pelt soon adorning his wall.

The two bodies shot out of the cellar, back up into another abandoned back alley. Still keeping his hold on the smaller ghost, Skulker flew at the wall just as Ghost Writer stopped being intangible (which he had done instinctively as they'd neared the ceiling…er, floor?).

Ghost Writer let out a grunt of pain as his thin body was slammed between a wall and the metallic ghost. Not nearly satisfied, Skulker almost immediately removed the pressure of his body against Ghost Writer's only to fling him at the opposite wall. Too disorientated to go intangible fast enough, the master author instead hit it full-force before falling onto the ground below it. "Ugh…" cradling his now-throbbing head, he looked up with eyes narrowed in pain in anger, only to have them widen in shock as he saw a bright green ecto-blast heading for him. Bolting upright headless of the pain that caused his back, he thrust out his hands and managed to get a shield up just in time, Skulker's attack bouncing off it harmlessly.

"Now _this_ is more like it!" Skulker laughed, eyes ablaze. Ghost Writer knew now that his chances of simply escaping were slim to none…he'd have to battle it out with the metal-clad hunter. Ghost Writer had never been much of a fighter and he felt a thrill of fear go through him as he realized what that probably meant for him, though he tried not to show it. He stood up and bared overly-sharp teeth, prepared to fight. He'd be damned if he gave his larger opponent the satisfaction of an easy catch. Despite that, as he charged up some ecto-beams and a new gadget sprung from Skulker's armor, he couldn't help but think,_ "This is going to end very badly…"_


End file.
